If the grass is greener on one’s own side – does one stop watering?

Number 42 on the right, neighbours to the left

So confusing! I opened an upstairs window this week to this image. People here let their grass go brown in summer. I went looking around and it seems everyone does it. This, of course, made me feel wasteful. Inadequate. But I don’t want brown grass as summer is when we use the garden the most.

And here’s what 40 looks like today:

The black stainless steel bracelet I had made arrived. I had my CBT phrase inscribed on it. Fiat lux. As in, when dark thoughts come into my mind, fiat lux. It’s a work in progress – but yes, it does help to have a reminder there to make an effort to not think terrible things.

Enlightened? I wish! I often feel like I’m drowning in dark thoughts, so I need to make a conscious effort to fight that. CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) helped with that, but it’s easy to fall back into the destructive cycles.

I’m only guessing, but would think the French mindset definitely doesn’t include lawn watering. I remember going to Carnac one year – August and the Festival des Menhirs. The world famous avenues of standing stones were up to their ears in dead grass, and thus rather underwhelming. The final ceremonies however included a candlelit procession to the stones followed by a firework display, which of course set the grass on fire, and thus saved cutting it to reveal the stones, and also allowed the local fire service to put on a star performance, for which they received the biggest cheer of the evening. Your CBT bracelet reminder is a brilliant idea and 40 looks pretty OK too 🙂

When I did CBT, the doctor suggested we write a phrase on paper and keep it with us at all times so we could make a conscious effort to look at it whenever the intrusive thoughts came – so me being practical (and lazy), I decided the bracelet would save time 🙂

From what I remember there wasn’t an idea of having a lawn as an integral part of the garden…a garden was the flower beds and climbers while the grass was just the patch in between which would renew itself next year anyway so why waste water on it when water was generally metered.

As there has been a heatwave in the UK all summer, with threats of hosepipe bans, all our neighbours have brown (dead) lawns. We have had some welcome rain recently, & ours appears to be the only green lawn, though why that should be is a mystery, as I hardly watered it during the sunny spells. Front lawn is still patchy green & dead, but as a massive colony of meadow ants lives under it, we put up with the uneven look.
I love your bracelet, & now I’m tempted to have one with a phrase from my therapy on it. (breathe & relax, in times of stress & anguish, both of which I forget to do properly).xx

Yes, we do. One of our downspouts goes directly into a small (300 L) barrel. I then siphon it into an adjacent 300 L barrel and use it to water the garden. It’s kind of a Rube Goldberg installation, but it helps out.

We only have green grass in winter and spring. I try to keep a little bit near the house green for the alpacas but grey water from the washing machine only goes so far. Clean water goes on my fruit trees and special roses. Even so, I always get a massive water bill by the end of summer. I do like the look of your grass though.
I have close to 48 thousand litres of rain water all up but most of that is dedicated to firefighting. You should be able to get a few rainwater tanks installed for a reasonable price. Worth looking into.
Oh, and not bad for 40. 😉

It’s a mixed bag. Everything that comes off my roof goes into 3 separate, 2000 litre above ground tanks. The overflow from those tanks goes into a 28,000 litre concrete, underground tank. That’s the firefighting tank and it’s connected to 2 petrol pumps which send water to roof sprinklers. The 18,000 litre above ground pool is also hooked into the system so that once the level of the water in the underground drops to a certain point, water flows from the pool into the tank to keep the roof sprinklers going.
When I first put the system in, everyone thought I was nuts. Totally paranoid. Now? Not so much. 🙂
For your garden, you probably only need a single 2000 litre tank. It should be sited low enough for gravity to fill it from the roof but high enough for gravity to then send the water out to the garden. It won’t be high pressure but it will do the job.

I think it’s great when the grass is greener on your side – isn’t that usually never the case?? 🙂 It’s a lot of work keeping the garden alive in the this climate, so kudos to you. And that bracelet looks great – had to do a quick check to see that I got the translation right, he he…

Mind-bending though, isn’t it? It leaves you not knowing what to do.
We still haven’t received the water bill for this summer, but by my calculation it can be nowhere near as bad as southern Spain. There the combination of heat and expensive water makes for shocking costs.